上期,小编节选了《旅行的艺术》一书里有关“对旅行的期待”的精彩内容供大家阅读,不知道大家是否“啃”得津津有味呢?哈哈,我也知道文字难度不低……但内容很有启发性,不是吗?这期,小编从全书各个不同章节中为大家精选了好些精彩论段,其内容包括作者对我们在旅行中较少对其进行思索的机场航班显示屏、飞机的起飞、旅游指南、旅途拍照等问题的深刻感悟。别担心,这期的节选除了第一段比较难“啃”以外,其他的都不算太难。大家如果认同其中的一些观点,就快快“学以致用”吧,让我们更好地把握往后的每段旅程,收获更多旅途精彩!——Lavender
文字难度：★★★★
Nowhere is the appeal of the airport more concentrated than in the television screens which hang in rows from 1)terminal ceilings announcing the departure and arrival of flights and whose absence of 2)aesthetic self-consciousness, whose 3)workmanlike 4)casing and 5)pedestrian 6)typefaces, do nothing to disguise their emotional 7)charge or imaginative allure. Tokyo, Amsterdam, Istanbul. 8)Warsaw, Seattle, 9)Rio. The screens bear all the poetic 10)resonance of the last line of 11)James Joyce’s Ulysses: at once a record of where the novel was written and, no less importantly, a symbol of the 12)cosmopolitan spirit behind its composition: “13)Trieste, 14)Zurich, Paris.” The constant calls of the screens, some accompanied by the impatient pulsing of a 15)cursor, suggest with what ease our seemingly 16)entrenched lives might be altered, were we to walk down a corridor and on to a craft that in a few hours would land us in a place of which we had no memories and where no one knew our names. How pleasant to hold in mind, through the 17)crevasses of our moods, at three in the afternoon when lassitude and despair threaten, that there is always a plane taking off for somewhere, for 18)Baudelaire’s “Anywhere! Anywhere!”: Trieste, Zurich, Paris. 
在机场里,最引人注目的莫过于机场大厅天花板上吊着的一排排电视屏幕,上面公布着飞机进出港的航班情况。这些显示屏本身并无“审美自觉”可言,它们有精巧的外壳,屏幕上显示着呆板的字样,却并未掩饰其洋溢着的情感,引人浮想联翩(编者注:这句话想表达机场的航班显示屏其设计并没有经过刻意的雕琢,没有独特个性以及特别的美学意蕴,只是具有简单的功能性,但尽管如此,却因为那些不断跳动的航班信息而令它们看上去仿佛满载情感,充满了人性美)。东京、阿姆斯特丹、伊斯坦布尔;华沙、西雅图、里约热内卢。这些显示屏承载着其对詹姆斯·乔伊斯的小说《尤利西斯》最后一行文字产生的诗意共鸣,而那行文字——“的里雅斯特、苏黎世、巴黎。”既表明了小说的写作地点,同样重要的是,它也象征着作品背后的世界精神。有的屏幕上的光标不安分地闪烁着,所有显示屏都在持续不断地召唤我们,仿佛在昭示着我们既有的生活多么容易被改变:假设我们走过一条通道,登上一架飞机,数小时后,我们将置身于一个全然陌生的地方,在那里,没有人知道我们的名字。下午三点,倦怠绝望之感来袭,在种种苦闷情绪的缝隙间,想到这时总有一架飞机可以带我们飞向某个地方,正如波德莱尔所谓的“任何地方!任何地方!”,如“的里雅斯特、苏黎世、巴黎”,那该是多么惬意的事!
There is psychological pleasure in this take-off too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine19)analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives; to imagine that we too might one day 20)surge above much that now 21)looms over us.
飞机起飞也会给我们带来心灵上的愉悦,因为飞机的迅速升空是腾飞巨变的极佳象征。飞机起飞呈现的力量促使我们联想到人生中类似的具有决定性的转机;它让我们想象自己也许有一天也能冲破目前迫近我们的困境。
Journeys are the 22)midwives of thought. Few places are more 23)conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to 24)stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape.
旅行催人思索。很少有什么地方比在行进中的飞机、轮船或是火车上更益于人们倾听内心的声音。我们眼前的景观同我们脑子里可能产生的想法之间存在着某种奇异的关联:宏观大义有时需要壮阔景观的催生,新鲜想法往往产生于陌生的地点。在流动景观的刺激下,原本容易停顿的内省反思得以不断推进。
When guidebooks praised a site, they pressured a visitor to match their authoritative enthusiasm, where they were silent, pleasure or interest seemed 25)unwarranted.
当旅游指南对一个景点赞不绝口时,其字里行间透出的具有权威性的热忱会迫使游客怀抱相应的心境,而实际上,当他们去到那个景点,他们会沉默不语,毫无快乐和兴致可言。
A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary 26)receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and27)fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
旅行的危险之一是,在我们还没机会培养起旅行所需的感受力之前,我们在错误的时机进行游览观光。因而,正如散乱的珠子缺少链子将其串成项链一般,新讯息对我们而言毫无价值且难以把握。
The risk is 28)compounded by geography: the way that cities contain buildings or 29)monuments that are only a few feet apart in space, but30)leagues apart in terms of what would be required to appreciate them. Having made a journey to a place we may never revisit, we feel obliged to admire a sequence of things without any connection to one another besides a geographic one, a proper understanding of which would require qualities unlikely to be found in the same person.
这种危险由于地理原因会进一步加剧。同一座城市中的几个建筑物或几处遗迹之间不过咫尺之遥,然而鉴赏它们所需具备的能力却有天渊之别。到一个我们或许将不会重游的地方观光,我们感觉到有必要走马观花地欣赏一系列除了地理位置相近外别无关联的景致风物。然而,要一一正确地理解其中意蕴,所需的学识恐怕不是一个人身上能齐备的。
Travel twists our curiosity according to a superficial geographical logic, as superficial as if a university course were to prescribe books according to their size rather than subject matter.
旅游以肤浅的地理逻辑扭曲我们的好奇心,那种肤浅程度就好比大学某一课程指定教科书时只看书的大小厚薄,而不问其主题一样。
31)Ruskin was distressed by how seldom people noticed details. He 32)deplored the blindness and haste of modern tourists, especially those who prided themselves on covering Europe in a week by train (a service first offered by 33)Thomas Cook in 1862): “No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one 34)whit stronger, happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.”
罗斯金因为人们极少注意细节而感到苦恼。他为现代旅游者的盲目和匆忙感到痛惜,尤其是那些得意于自己在一周内乘火车游遍了欧洲(由托马斯·库克在1862年首次开辟的旅游线路)的人:“以每小时100英里的速度旅行,变换游走多少个地方也丝毫不会让我们变得更健康,更快乐,更明智。世界如此之大,不管人们走得多慢,都远不能看尽所有的风景;走得快,也不会看到更多的景色。真正珍贵的东西是所思和所见,而不是速度。就子弹而言,飞得太快没什么好处;就人而言,真正意义上的人,走慢点也并无害处;因为他的荣耀根本不在于行走,而在于体验。”
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is the desire to hold on to it: to possess it and give it 35)weight in our lives. There is an urge to say, “I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”
在与美邂逅的那一刻,我们有一种强烈的冲动,渴望紧紧握住它:将其占为己有,使其成为自己生命中举足轻重的一部分。我们迫切地想说:“我曾在这里,我看见这个了,对我来说,这很重要。”
But beauty is fugitive, it is frequently found in places to which we may never return or else it results from a rare conjunction of season, light and weather. How then to possess it, how to hold on to the floating train, the 36)halva-like bricks or the English valley?
但美是飘忽的,常常在那些我们也许不会重游的地方闪现,或是在一定的季节、光线及天气的难得配合之下乍现。那么,我们如何拥有美,如何紧握住漂浮的列车、哈尔瓦模样的砖块抑或英国山谷之美呢?
The camera provides one option. Taking photographs can 37)assuage the 38)itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety about losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the 39)shutter. Or else we can try to imprint ourselves physically on a place of beauty, perhaps hoping to 40)render it more present in us by making ourselves more present in it. In 41)Alexandria, standing before 42)Pompey’s Pillar, we could try to carve our name in the 43)granite, to follow the example of 44)Flaubert’s friend Thompson from 45)Sunderland. A more modest step might be to buy something—a bowl, a 46)lacquered box or a pair of sandals (Flaubert acquired three carpets in Cairo)—to be reminded of what we have lost, like a 47)lock of hair that we cut from a departing lover’s 48)mane.
相机提供了一种选择。拍照可以稍稍满足被一个地方的美所激起的占有欲;我们担心美妙难求的景色会溜走,这份焦虑会随着快门的每一次闪动而逐渐消失。或者,我们也许可以尝试让自己在那美丽的地方留下实在的烙印,希望通过在这个地方多留自己“存在”的印记而使其在我们心中更活灵活现。在亚历山大港,站在庞培石柱前,我们可以设法将自己的名字刻在花岗岩上,就像福楼拜那个来自桑德兰的朋友汤普逊一样。而更合适的方式也许是买一些纪念品——一个碗,一个漆木盒或是一双凉鞋(福楼拜曾在开罗买了三块地毯),用以提醒我们已失去的东西,这些纪念品就像是我们从要离开的爱人那儿剪下的一缕发丝。
True possession of a scene is a matter of making a conscious effort to notice elements and understand their construction. We can see beauty well enough just by opening our eyes, but how long this beauty survives in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it. The camera blurs the distinction between looking and noticing, between seeing and possessing; it may give us the option of true knowledge but it may49)unwittingly make the effort of acquiring it seem 50)superfluous. It suggests we have done all the work simply by taking a photograph.
要想真正拥有一方景色,你得有意识地努力注意到各种要素,并且了解它们之间的关联。只要将眼睛睁开,我们就能看到许多美景,但这份美将在记忆里存留多久,这取决于我们有多用心去领会它的内涵。照相机模糊了“观看”和“留意”之间、“看到”与“拥有”之间的区别;它或许可以让我们了解到真正的美,却可能在不经意间使意欲获得美的那份努力显得多余。照相机暗示着我们,只需拍下一张照片就完事了。
Rather than using photography as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used it as an alternative, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously from a faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
这些人没有把拍照视为“积极用心观览”的一种辅助手段,而是将其视作“积极用心观览”的替代方式,相比从前,他们对世界关注得更少了,只因他们相信照片自然确保他们能拥有那份美。
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to. If only we could apply a travelling mindset to our own 51)locales, we might find these places becoming no less interesting than the high mountain 52)passes and butterfly-filled jungles of 53)Humboldt’s South America.
我们从旅行中获取的乐趣或许更多取决于我们旅行时的心境,而不是我们旅行的目的地本身。如果我们可以将旅行时的心境带入我们自己的居所,我们或许会发现,这些地方的有趣程度不亚于洪堡在南美之旅中经过的高山和处处都有蝴蝶飞舞的丛林。
